The Impact of Gaming Marketing

When you think of big budget titles like Call of Duty, Uncharted, Halo, and Super Mario, something they all have in common to their success is marketing. Marketing for video games have come a long way. 20 years ago, advertising for games comprised of print ads and tv commercials. Today, companies spend millions of dollars to promote their games; especially AAA titles. From trailers shown online and in movie theaters, to radio and official game websites, video games advertisement today has the potential to reach a wider audience. Microsoft is known for their huge marketing expenditures. For example, Microsoft budgeted roughly 30 million dollars to promote Halo 3. This is quite a high budget for a sequel whose predecessors have made an impact in the gaming community. In its first week, Halo 3 sold nearly 4 million copies. For being the 3rd game in a popular series, it comes to no surprise it was able to sell millions of copies. Sony on the other hand, is known for having a poor marketing when it comes to promoting their games even if it’s an AAA title. Uncharted 3 for instance, had a marketing budget of around 7 million dollars in the UK. That’s nearly 4 times less than the 30 million dollar budget for Halo 3.
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